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To get a feel for Switzerland's Maximilian Büsser & Friends, a small but revered watch brand, it pays to drop by the firm's store on a narrow street threading through Geneva's cobblestone quarter. The M.A.D. Gallery, as it is called, is just doors away from both the Lutheran Evangelic Church of Geneva and the Palais de Justice, the city's courthouse, both early 18th-century stone edifices stiffly suggesting Swiss rectitude and piety.

Looks deceive. Inside the glass-fronted M.A.D. Gallery, watchmaker Max Büsser, 46, lets it rip. There are chrome music machines shaped like jet engines, reinvented penny-farthing bicycles of the 1870s, brass-and-walnut "applause machines" that provide an ego boost by enthusiastically clapping for you at the touch of a button. All these whacky toys are for sale -- at prices ranging from $200 to $200,000 -- and have been made by contemporary designers from the Czech Republic to China.

This is a watch store? These unique inventions jumbled together create a cohesive aesthetic of simple, elegant lines in chrome and brass, an often witty suggestion of the West's rich industrial past reinvented for the 21st century. That also is a pretty good description of the look and feel of the MB&F brand as displayed in its watches, found in discrete glass cases around the shop, in between the other creations.

The HM4, resembling jet engines, priced at $230,000 (left), The HM2, modeled after microcassettes, costs $107,000 (center) and The HM3, a 3-D watch with cones, priced at $92,000 (right).
Courtesy of Max Busser and Friends

Horological Machine No. 4, also known as the Thunderbolt, is a model in a contemporary line of watches inspired by Büsser's childhood -- in this case, the model airplanes he used to build as a boy. Two tapered cylinders -- reminiscent of the twin engines on a 1970s U.S. fighter jet -- are mounted on a titanium case and strapped to the wrist with calfskin and a folding buckle. The engine face on the right, behind a sapphire crystal, indicates hours and minutes; the other, the energy remaining in the 72-hour power reserve.

Only 100 HM4 watches were made, including 16 limited-edition versions with hand-painted details and a vintage leather strap crafted from old Swiss military bags. The HM4 was awarded the best Concept and Design Watch of the 2010 Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève. At the time of its release, an awed reviewer of ABlogtoWatch.com gushed it was a "kick ass" machine that "lays on the cool."

While this might be simply too much hipness for most of us to bear, make no mistake, the HM4 is an adult's watch and unlike anything on the market. The HM4 originally cost $188,000; today's version is priced at $230,000, and none have ever come up at auction.

Just two years before that aviation-inspired number was released, Büsser came out with a watch that looked like an old cassette recorder. One version of the HM2, as it is called, boasts a rectangular red-gold chassis encased in a sapphire crystal. Inside, the twin cassette "spools" are actually dials; in one dial, an hour hand jumps back into position at the hour, alongside concentric retrograde minutes, which means the minute hand doesn't complete a full circle, but goes from 1 to 60 and then snaps back to start again. The other dial boasts a bi-hemisphere "moon phase," a rotating wheel that mirrors the fullness of the moon, and a retrograde date. This is serious under-the-hood stuff, packaged as a witty 1980s microcassette. Price: $107,000.

The HM3, meanwhile, has two sapphire cones rising up from the case, one with 24-hour hand and day/night indicator; the other, with minutes, can be read straight on or from the side of the cone, making it a 3-D watch. All of the hour and minute information under the cones is transmitted by ceramic ball bearings to hands that have been laser cut. The automatic rotor powering the watch is also visible through a crystal window on the dial face.

Pretty stunning stuff. The "friends" in the iconoclastic Max Büsser & Friends brand refers to his outside collaborators; in this case, the HM3's engine was designed by a grandmaster of Swiss watch-making, Jean-Marc Wiederrecht. To us, while distinctly its own creation, HM3's silhouette and cones seem faintly suggestive of the 1998-released Antiqua by the French-born watchmaker Vianney Halter (Penta, "Avant-Garde Classics," May 21, 2012). If Halter was a source of inspiration, consciously or not, there's good reason for that. Büsser has worked with Halter before.

Büsser was born in Italy in 1967, the product of a Swiss father, who for many years worked for Nestlé, and an Indian mother from Madhya Pradesh. The family eventually moved to Switzerland. At the University of Lausanne, Büsser picked up a higher degree, in microtechnology engineering, and was about to disappear into the marketing department at Procter & Gamble or Nestlé, when a chance meeting on a ski slope resulted in the young graduate changing direction and working in the Jura mountains for the then-troubled watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre. It was the watch company's charismatic new CEO, Henry-John Belmont that Büsser had met, and he "sold me his dream," Büsser says.

Working day and night, they turned history-rich LeCoultre around. Seven years later, in 1998, headhunter Egon Zehnder called Büsser and asked him to apply to another troubled watch operation, this one at American jeweler Harry Winston. Büsser was all of 31. "You're young and a little bit raw, but you have the potential," the headhunter told him -- adding that there were 40 candidates competing to become the director of the American jeweler's watch unit.

A platinum LM2, just out, for $190,000.
Courtesy of Max Busser and Friends

Büsser saw that Harry Winston had "no clear vision" -- quartz watches were simply an excuse to mount diamonds -- and he gave it to the management straight: For an American firm to survive the competitive high-end watch industry, Harry Winston needed to make "ultimate timepieces" with stories that could directly take on 200-year-old Swiss watchmakers.

Büsser got the job and launched Harry Winston's much-revered Opus series, an annual release of unique and rare timepieces that are now coveted by collectors the world over. Büsser appears to be the Swiss watch industry's Sergei Diaghilev -- the fabled impresario behind the Ballets Russes at the dawn of the 20th century -- somehow able to collect, inspire, and push the most talented watch designers well beyond their comfort zones, sometimes creating works never before seen. With Vianney Halter, for example, Büsser created Harry Winston's Opus 3, a kooky watch with bubble-like crystals built on a Rubik's Cube of flipping shingles. It was in the Harry Winston job, Büsser tells us, that he learned about the "power of creating without giving a damn about your customers." Translation: Instead of marketing types telling him what watches customers want, he creates unusual, rare, and innovative works that he himself would want to wear -- and the customers miraculously show up.

Büsser's life changed when his father died. They weren't on good terms and barely spoke; Swiss, and middle-class, his father was a diplomat uninterested in money, and often struggled to pay bills. But Büsser deeply felt his father's loss. He was, Büsser says, "the most honest" man he has ever known. Exceedingly well paid and feted, Büsser was now suddenly wondering, if he got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would be the point of it all? He went into therapy for 18 months. When he walked out, Büsser knew he didn't want to run a watch operation for a famous brand anymore. He didn't want to manage hordes of people. He simply wanted to return to the joy of creating "for myself."

Maximillian Büsser & Friends came into being in 2005; the 900,000 Swiss francs ($960,410) he had saved financed both the company and his salary for two years. Büsser initially struggled to get his firm off the ground, but talent and reputation turned the tide, and today his 21st-century start-up is on its way to making significant contributions to Switzerland's horological heritage.

Around the corner from the M.A.D. Gallery in Geneva, in a tiny attic above an alcohol-free restaurant once operated by nuns, Büsser and a handful of loyal employees run MB&F. In one atelier room, they're poring over the orders logged in a computer. In another room, watchmakers wearing white cotton gloves check models through a jeweler's loupe. A couple of years ago, besides launching his fanciful Horological Machines, Büsser launched his Legacy Machines series, watches loaded with mechanical quirks but also, aesthetically, much closer to conventional watches. The LM1 won Best Men's Watch from the industry's association. Last week, Büsser released LM2, with the series' trademark high-domed crystal and more of the wizardry that makes collectors' hearts go pitter-patter: a modern double regulator, an 18th-century horological invention that more reliably converts a watch's raw energy to precisely measured split seconds. Cost: $156,000 in the unlimited rose or white-gold edition; $190,000 for one of the 18 platinum limited editions.

For a creator who claims he couldn't care less about customers, Büsser has a knack of delivering exactly what customers want.